A former GTA veteran has commented on how rough it is to get work in the games industry in its current state.
In an in-depth interview with Reece "Kiwi Talkz" Reilly, former Rockstar Games audio engineer Rob Carr – who worked on the likes of GTA 5, La Noire and Red Dead Redemption during his tenure at the company – spoke about the current state of the games industry where layoffs and studio closures are becoming a common occurrence. "It's not nice to lose your job at any particular point" Carr says, "but, you know, when when there's literally thousands of people in the exact same situation, you find yourself in a position where it's no longer like – my 20-year tenure is no longer good enough for me to get a job whereas 5 years ago it was."
Carr adds, "I got 20 years industry experience, I've worked on some of the biggest titles in the world, but there's 35 other guys with the exact same amount of experience and tenure and projects behind them as I've got." And that when it comes to the interview process, Carr recalls being told there's nothing wrong with his applications, and that "It's a toss of a coin at this point."
Carr currently lives in Finland, working on his own game Nyrkkipoyta, and working on the Audio Expat blog. Carr recalls in the about me section of his blog that following the end of a contract with Blizzard where he worked on Overwatch 2 with Redhill Games he was since furloughed, and per his LinkedIn is no longer working at the studio.
Obviously the gaming boom that came with Covid was a brilliant time for the industry financially, allowing many studios to size up, but unfortunately the demand has since fallen off somewhat, with Ubisoft's CEO admitting earlier this year that the company spun up "too many projects" after anticipating "sustained demand that didn’t fully materialize" post-Covid.
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